In 1997 World Party released a song called She’s the One. A simple, affecting piano ballad written by Karl Wallinger “in 10 minutes and recorded in about an hour”, it should have been a huge hit. And it was, but not until two years later, when an almost identical version became a number one for Robbie Williams.

“The song had a much better time than me, popping off to the Brits while I was at home eating crackers dipped in water,” says Wallinger, who on this warm August afternoon has swapped prison rations for shepherd’s pie in a private members’ club in Soho. “But it was lucky it was a hit. It saved my arse financially for a few years while I was holding on to the handrail thinking, 'What happened?’”

Life happened. Death wasn’t far away, either, following the brain aneurysm in 2001 which turned Wallinger’s life inside out. At 54, he has the slightly weathered air of someone who has come through a storm. Short, comfortably built — “I’m twice the man I used to be” — with tight grey curls, glasses and a half-hearted beard, he looks less like a multi-instrumentalist musical visionary and much more like “the guy who has been taking my dog for a walk on Hampstead Heath for the past 12 years”.

He’s only half-joking. Arkeology, a new five-disc compendium of outtakes, live tracks, B-sides, demos and doodles, is the first World Party release since 2000. Three autumn concerts — including one at the Royal Albert Hall — mark a return to UK stages after an absence of 15 years. Much water has passed beneath the bridge since the days when Wallinger was hailed as a one-man cross between the Beatles, Brian Wilson, Prince and Bob Dylan.

Back then, World Party’s beguilingly homespun mix of classic pop, soul, folk, funk and rock seemed destined for greatness. Less a band than a vehicle for Wallinger’s muse, they scored a Top 30 US hit in 1987 with their first single, Ship of Fools, while their wonderful second album Goodbye Jumbo won Q magazine’s Album of the Year award in 1990.

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Fuelled by a sharp, vaguely militant hippie ethos, their environmental doomsaying now seems remarkably prescient. “I wasn’t trying to be ahead of the curve, I was just writing about things that seemed obvious at the time,” says Wallinger. “We still haven’t done anything about it. I can’t get my head around the stupidity of materialism.”

The fact that their maverick sensibility never conformed to any movement was part of World Party’s charm, but in the end the promise petered out amid declining creative returns and “inter-business bull----”. When the last album — Dumbing Up — was released in 2000 on Wallinger’s Seaview label, barely anyone noticed.

“The most stupid thing was that we won the Q award with Jumbo and then disappeared for three years,” he says. “We were meant to be supporting Neil Young in America but [the record company] took us off the tour to make an album. That was it. There was a moment there: door open, door closes.”

The door was already closing when, in February 2001, Wallinger suffered an aneurysm while cycling with his son Louis at Center Parcs in Suffolk. He lost his right-side peripheral vision and now feels the world is “looking around a corner” at him. “I don’t think it’s something I’ll ever get used to,” he says. “It’s been a re-learning process. I’m a different person, probably a better one. It’s a cliché, but hey, that’s me. You become more philosophical, and what makes you happy can be simplified. I’m not a control freak any more. I probably was. That’s gone, I realise the futility of it.”

Fortunately, the aneurysm didn’t affect his long-term ability to play or write. Wallinger has been working on material for a “proper” album, while Arkeology features one outstanding new song, Everybody’s Falling in Love, which suggests his knack for hooky, Sixties-style pop is as strong as ever. Call it Beatlesesque, just not to his face. “I get hammered with this retro thing, but I’m not retro,” he says, rather sharply. “I don’t do pastiche.” Even so, Arkeology includes loving recreations of several late-period Beatles classics, while he despairs that music-making has “been invaded by machines. It’s the final victory of the trans-border corporate world.” As if in protest, the ringtone on his mobile phone is Sly Stone’s Family Affair.

Born in Prestatyn in 1957, Wallinger has “been a song creature all my life”. As a three-year-old, he would watch his older sisters “push the sofas back and dance around the room to the Beatles, Buddy Holly and Junior Walker. From that point, I didn’t want to do anything else. I was always making up tunes and I never questioned it.”

He went to Charterhouse, the Surrey public school, before landing in London in the late 1970s, where a “five-year lost weekend” spent playing in bands included a year as musical director of The Rocky Horror Show. In 1983, he joined the Waterboys as keyboardist, contributing to A Pagan Place and This is the Sea before leaving to pursue World Party. Wallinger has on occasion been less than complimentary about chief Waterboy Mike Scott, and in the long list of musicians thanked on Arkeology Scott’s name is conspicuously absent. “Funny that, innit?” he mutters. What’s the problem?

“Just ongoing bitterness — stupid, but it’s not keeping me awake. Good luck to him.” The success of She’s the One tested his relationship with another former bandmate, Guy Chambers, part of World Party before becoming Robbie William’s songwriting partner. While helping out on 1997’s Egyptology, Chambers heard She’s the One and later arranged for Williams to record it.

“It was very strange,” says Wallinger. “Nobody phoned me to say they were doing it, and they used the band I’d just been on the road with to record it. It also annoyed me that Robbie didn’t sing the right words. It was a weird one: you lose your friends but you make loads of money.”

The royalty cheques were a “life-saver” while Wallinger recuperated at home in Crouch End, north London, where he lives with his wife, sculptor Suzie Zamit, the mother of their two adult children. Recovery was a protracted affair. It was 2006 before he resurrected World Party, playing concerts in Australia and the US. Performing in the UK again was “something I wanted to do when I was back up to speed, and it’s taken a while”. For the forthcoming shows, he promises an “all-singing and dancing World Party” featuring a nine-piece band and a small choir.

He’s clearly excited by the prospect, but also uncertain of where World Party fit in 2012. Does he harbour any regrets about how his career has panned out? “Not really. I didn’t feel like I ever wanted to rule the world. From what I’ve seen of what success means to a lot of people, I’m glad that I wasn’t incredibly successful. After having your head sawn in half, it seems strange any of that mattering. I just know I’m here and I want to play some music. It’s that cheesy. I gave up worrying about anything else.”

'Arkeology’ (Seaview Records) is released on Aug 27. World Party play The Assembly, Leamington Spa, on Oct 28, O2 Academy, Oxford, on Oct 29, and the Albert Hall on Nov 1